Flatiron Building

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The Flatiron Building, or Fuller Building as it was originally called, is located at 175 Fifth Avenue in the borough of Manhattan, and is considered to be one of the first skyscrapers ever built. Upon completion in 1902 it was one of the tallest buildings in New York City. The Flatiron building sits on a triangular island block at 23rd Street, Fifth Avenue, and Broadway, anchoring the south (downtown) end of Madison Square.
The Flatiron neighborhood around the building is called the Flatiron District after its signature building, which has become an icon of New York.

Architecture
Unlike New York's early skyscrapers, which took the form of towers arising from a lower, blockier mass, such as the contemporary Singer Building (1902–1908), the Flatiron Building epitomizes the Chicago school conception: like a classical Greek column, Flatiron facade of limestone at the bottom changing to glazed terra-cotta as the floors rise) is divided into a base, shaft and capital. The Flatiron Building was designed by Chicago's Daniel Burnham as a vertical Renaissance palazzo with Beaux-Arts styling.[ Early sketches by Daniel Burnham show a design with an (unexecuted) clockface and a far more elaborate crown than in the actual building. Though Burnham maintained overall control of the design process, he was not directly connected with the details of the structure as built; credit should be shared with his designer Frederick P. Dinkelberg (c 1859—1935), a Pennsylvania-born architect in Burnham's office, who first worked for Burnham at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893. Working drawings for the Flatiron Building, however, remain to be located, though renderings were published at the time of construction in American Architect and The Architectural Record.
Flatiron Building steel skeleton made it possable to be built to 22 stories (285 feet) relatively easily, which would have been difficult using other construction methods of that time. It was a technique familiar to the Fuller Company, a contracting firm based in Chicago with ties to Burnham and considerable expertise in building such tall structures. At the vertex, the triangular tower is only 6.5 feet (2 m) wide; viewed from above, this ‘pointy’ end of the structure describes an acute angle of about 25 degrees. New York's Flatiron Building was not the first building of its triangular ground-plan: aside from a possibly unique triangular Roman temple built on a similarly constricted site in the city of Verulam, Britannia, both the Gooderham Building of Toronto, built in 1892, and the 1897 English-American Building in Atlanta predate it. Both, however, are smaller than their New York counterpart.
The facade of the Flatiron Building was restored in 1991 by the firm of Hurley & Farinella.

The Flatiron Building has become an icon representative of New York City. It was the subject of one of Edward Steichen's iconic atmospheric photographs, taken on a wet wintry late afternoon in 1905, as well as a memorable image by Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz reflected on the dynamic symbolism of the building, noting that it "...appeared to be moving toward like the bow of a monster ocean steamer—a picture of a new America still in the making,"and remarked that what the Parthenon was to Athens, the Flatiron was to New York.
The building, which took Flatiron name from the triangular lot on which it was built – because of Flatiron shape, locals called it "the cowcatcher" or "the flatiron"– was officially named the Fuller Building after George A. Fuller, who founded the company that, two years after his death, financed Flatiron construction under the leadership of Harry St. Francis Black, Fuller's son-in-law. Locals took an immediate interest in the building, placing bets on how far the debris would spread when the wind knocked it down. This presumed susceptibility to damage also gave it the nickname Burnham's Folley.
Because of the wind in the area and the downdrafts caused by the building, it is said to have been involved in the origin of the phrase "23 skidoo", from what policemen would shout at men who tried to get glimpses of women's dresses being blown up by the winds swirling around the building due to the strong downdrafts.
In 1906, futurist H. G. Wells, in his book The Future in America: A Search After Realities said about the building:
I found myself agape, admiring a sky-scraper the prow of the Flat-iron Building, to be particular, ploughing up through the traffic of Broadway and Fifth Avenue in the afternoon light.
Two famous buildings in the Netherlands – Het Strijkijzer (Dutch for "Flatiron") in The Hague and the Vesteda Toren in Eindhoven – were inspired by the Flatiron Building.

As an icon of New York City, the Flatiron Building is a popular spot for tourist photographs and a National Historic Landmark since 1989, but it is also a functioning office building which is currently the headquarters of publishing companies held by Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck of Stuttgart, Germany, under the umbrella name of Macmillan, including: Henry Holt and Company, St. Martin's Press, Tor/Forge, Picador and . Macmillan is renovating some floors, and their website comments that:
There are oddities about the building's interior: to reach the top floor, the 21st, which was added in 1905, three years after the building was completed, a second elevator has to be taken from the 20th floor; on that floor, the bottoms of the windows are chest-high; the bathrooms are divided, with the men's rooms on even floors and the women's rooms on odd ones.
The Flatiron’s interior is known for having its strangely-shaped offices with walls that cut through at an angle on their way to the skyscraper’s famous point. These “point” offices are the most coveted and feature amazing northern views that look directly upon another famous Manhattan landmark, the Empire State Building.
During a 2005 restoration of the Flatiron Building a 15-story vertical advertising banner covered the facade of the building. The advertisement elicited protests from many New York City residents, prompting the New York City Department of Buildings to step in and force the building's owners to remove it.
In January 2009, an Italian real estate investment firm bought a majority stake in the Flatiron Building, with plans to turn it into a world-class luxury hotel, although the conversion may have to wait ten years until the leases of the current tenants run out. The Sorgente Group S.p.A., which is based in Rome, controls just over 50% of the building and plans to increase its stake. The firm's Historic and Trophy Buildings Fund owns a number of prestigious buildings in France and Italy, and was involved in buying, and then selling, a stake in New York's Chrysler Building. The value of the 22-story Flatiron Building, zoned by the city to allow it to become a hotel, is estimated to be $190 million.

Today, In popular culture the Flatiron Building is frequently seen on television commercials and documentaries as an easily recognizable symbol of the city, shown, for instance, in the opening credits of The Late Show With David Letterman. It is depicted as the headquarters of the Daily Bugle, for which Peter Parker is a freelance photographer in the Spider-man movies. In scenes of the TV show "Friends". of New York City that are shown during scene transitions. In the 1998 film Godzilla, the Flatiron Building is accidentily destroyed by the US Army while in pursuit of Godzilla. It is also the home of the fictional company Damage Control in the Marvel Universe comics.